Time and the Rani
| 144 – Time and the Rani | |||||
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| Doctor Who serial | |||||
The Doctor uncovers a plan to kidnap Earth's geniuses
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| Cast | |||||
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Others
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| Production | |||||
| Directed by | Andrew Morgan | ||||
| Written by | Pip and Jane Baker | ||||
| Script editor | Andrew Cartmel | ||||
| Produced by | John Nathan-Turner | ||||
| Incidental music composer | Keff McCulloch | ||||
| Production code | 7D | ||||
| Series | Season 24 | ||||
| Length | 4 episodes, 25 minutes each | ||||
| Date started | 7 September 1987 | ||||
| Date ended | 28 September 1987 | ||||
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| Author | Pip and Jane Baker |
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| Series |
Doctor Who book: Target novelisations |
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Release number
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128 (initial printings erroneously have it numbered 127) |
| Publisher | Target Books |
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Publication date
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December 1987 (Hardback) 5 May 1988 (Paperback) |
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Time and the Rani is the first serial of the 24th season in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 7 September to 28 September 1987. It was the first to feature Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor, who regenerates from the Sixth Doctor at the start of the story after Colin Baker was dismissed from the role.
Whilst in flight, the TARDIS is attacked by the Rani, an amoral scientist and renegade Time Lord. The TARDIS crash-lands on the planet Lakertya. On the floor of the console room, the Doctor regenerates for the sixth time. In his post-regenerative confusion the Doctor is separated from his young companion Mel Bush and tricked into assisting the Rani in her megalomaniac scheme to construct a giant time manipulator. Lost on the barren surface of the planet, Mel has to avoid the Rani's ingenious traps and her monstrous, bat-like servants, the Tetraps. She joins forces with a rebel faction among the Lakertyans, desperate to end the Rani's control of their planet. The Doctor must recover his wits in time to avoid becoming a permanent part of the Rani's plan to collect the genius of the greatest scientific minds in the universe, of which she has captured many including Einstein, in order that she can create a time manipulator, which would allow the Rani to control time anywhere in the universe, at the expense of all life on Lakertya. The Doctor manages to foil her plan and free the Lakertyans of her evil control. The Rani escapes in her TARDIS, but it has been commandeered by the Tetraps, who take her prisoner. The Doctor takes all the captured geniuses on board his TARDIS so that he can return them home.
Although this was the first story to feature the Seventh Doctor, it was written before McCoy's casting and therefore not directly tailored to his portrayal of the character. As Sixth Doctor actor Colin Baker declined to film a regeneration sequence, Sylvester McCoy instead wore his predecessor's costume and a blond curly wig and filmed the entire sequence himself. A number of spin-off media have provided additional explanation for the Doctor's regeneration including the Virgin New Adventures novels Timewyrm: Revelation, Love and War by Paul Cornell, Head Games by Steve Lyons, all of which speculate that the Seventh Doctor's 'essence' drove the Sixth Doctor to pilot the TARDIS into the Rani's tractor beam to become Time's Champion and prevent himself from becoming the Valeyard, and the Past Doctor Adventures novel Spiral Scratch by Gary Russell, which features the Sixth Doctor sacrificing much of his energy to prevent a pan-dimensional being from destroying creation, leaving him in a weakened physical condition before the Rani's attack.
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